Fractures
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Modern AU. It is Christine's second summer away in Portugal, and at home Erik feels like he's coming apart without her.


**A/N: A follow-up to Adventures in Longing and Love, and thus another part of the Tinder 'verse. Mostly the follow-up is the music mentioned in the first section, which Erik composed in that fic.**

* * *

The first time he plays it for anyone is that day in the cottage in Baile na hAbhann for John Henry. The second time is at a graveside against the wild Atlantic, only for ghosts to hear, a tribute to the memory of two people.

The third time he plays it is for Christine. Their agreement to someday marry a sweet new thing, they make their own journey down to Sligo, to tell his mother together, as they have told Lilly together, the closest thing Christine has in the world to a mother. In the cool of an evening down there together, in the field where they once watched the Perseids, the sky salmon-pink with sunset, he plays it for her, no context, no history (there is all the time in the world for that afterwards, and as much as it is a tribute to the Brownes, it is a tribute to her too, and all that he feels for her, and all that he will ever feel.)

She kisses him afterwards, and they hold each other, gentle and careful, silent but for their own breathing, and it is not a ceremony, is not a wedding, but there is a feeling deep inside that it is very nearly both of those things. A silent swearing of undying love, the salmon of the sky fading to navy, first twinkling stars their only witnesses.

* * *

He carries the memory of that night in his heart after she goes back to Portugal, cradles it close to his himself when he aches for her, lives it again behind his eyes when he dreams.

She comes back for his graduation, comes back for a weekend in late October, comes back for Christmas and he is close to being absorbed in the new music Kate has brought to him, the story, again, of two people, a world and a century away from Baile na hAbhann, but for precious days with Christine he leaves it all aside.

She comes twice in the spring, high with the excitement of her research and for all that he misses her terribly when she goes, he is endlessly happy to see how happy she is, and would never begrudge her a moment.

And then there are three months stretching before him. Three months without her, empty and hollow.

He throws himself into his work, but that only gets him as far as June, his latest research published, the Delacarte Project not quite able to absorb all his interest when he is no longer using it to procrastinate. It works to fill the time, to keep his mind occupied, but more and more as he records the music, feeds it into the computer to break it down into its component parts, to analyze the notes and sequences, they are only mechanical actions.

How can he put his heart into his music, when his heart is half a continent away?

(It might help if John Henry were here, someone who understands, but John Henry is in an archive in Sussex, studying old sanatorium papers, and Nadir has never loved someone in quite the same way he has.)

* * *

He listens to the Cranberries. He listens to Mary Black. He listens to Lana Del Rey and Heather Dale. He listens to Loreena McKennitt's 'The Lady of Shalott' and thinks of knights errant and John Henry's hair dyed black and Tennyson, 'In Memoriam." All of it he listens to, lying in bed with his eyes closed, burning scented candles of black orchid and sandalwood driving some of the cold out of his chest.

He listens to Lisa Hannigan, and dreams of Christine in his arms.

(There is a picture of her framed on his desk, her head thrown back in laughter, her blonde hair whipped by the wind. He looks at it from his bed, lamp aimed to keep it lit, to the distinction of all else in his room, as if his fiancée were a goddess.)

(He treats her as such every chance he gets, and it is nothing less than she deserves.)

He finds it impossible to listen to male singers, when all he wants is to hear her sing.

She sings for him through Skype, soft and gentle, and he cradles her voice to his heart.

* * *

Somehow shuffle throws up Thin Lizzy, 'Whiskey in the Jar'. _As I was going over the Cork and Kerry Mountains, I saw a Captain Farrell and his money he was counting…_ Phil Lynott's voice throws up the image of his own father behind his eyes, a photograph his mother kept. Dad, all of twenty-eight (so he, Erik, was about three), in a loose green shirt, tight jeans, his long hair falling around his face in waves, eyes closed before the microphone, neck of his guitar held firm with one hand, his fingers long and slim strumming the strings, and the way Phil Lynott sang it went heavy on bass but his Dad took it and pared it back a bit, retaining the wild edge (so Al said), and he liked to finish his sets with it, half-crooning the lyrics like a declaration.

It was the last song he ever played.

When he was small, Erik used to listen to the Wild One collection, just to hear it, just to try and find his Dad beneath the songs.

And maybe if his dad had lived it might have been one of the songs he taught him to play, with Gordon Lightfoot and Don McClean and Queen.

As it was he taught himself to play them all. And the year he was eleven he insisted on wearing baggy green shirts.

Suddenly he can't stand it anymore. Can't stand the music. Can't stand the lying here aching for Christine. He hits the off button on the speakers and jumps up, grabs his violin from the floor and puts bow to strings.

The notes are discordant and jarring but he saws them out just to relieve them from his hands, to get them out of his chest.

It's not enough not enough. His hands can't settle, need something else, need more. He throws the violin down on the bed, stuffs his phone into his pocket and his wallet and keys, and grabs his jacket from off the door. A walk, a walk should do him good, get the blood moving, burn off some of this energy. Moving is good. Moving is not being still. Moving is not letting himself dwell on things best left unthought of.

He is out of his room and out the door before he lets himself reconsider, not running but close to it. He doesn't like running, his heart likes it even less, but fast walking is enough, fast walking is good and make his muscles burn and when his muscles burn then there is less for him to think of, less things to tie up his brain in unproductive directions.

It's pelting rain, not a thunderstorm but close. The streets are quiet, only cars with their headlights on, no one to see him, no one to take any notice when they are hunting for shelter but the rain is good. The rain soaks into his hair, plasters it to his head, runs in rivulets down his face, soaks into the wool of his coat and makes it heavy, heavy as a uniform, heavy as a straitjacket but there is no one to lock him up, no one to even think about it and he doesn't want to be locked up, to be locked up would only let the thoughts win, force him to dwell on three months without Christine and two more weeks without her and three weeks until he turns twenty-nine, twenty-nine, the last age his father ever saw and does that mean twenty-nine will be the last age he sees? And if twenty-nine is the last age he sees and so much time of it has been spent away from Christine, has been wasted without her—

No no it won't have been wasted. The precious moments they get can never be a waste and the weeks she spends away are good, they're good, good for her and good for her research and good for her career and he won't begrudge her them but why couldn't she have chosen an Irish topic? Why couldn't she have done Noël Browne instead of Salazar, all his papers are in Trinity, John Henry told him because John Henry went and looked at them and probably cried over them, and she could still look at the influence of church on state and institutionalized religion and it wouldn't have to be in Portugal, wouldn't have to be a dictator, would be a defector and would be here, it would just be in Dublin and she could still stay in Maynooth every night and he would see her and they would only ever be parted a few hours and she would not consider it fairer to delay their marriage until after her conferring because she would be here and they wouldn't be parted for months at a time.

He can't tell her that, he can't tell her that, John Henry told him he can't tell her that, he knows he can't tell her that because that would be like telling him why can't he focus on only Romantic musicians or only modern musicians instead of folk musicians and not even folk musicians, old forgotten musicians who might have been great if they had been given a chance, and isn't that true of his father? Might have been great if he had been given a chance, might have been great if he had lived longer than twenty-nine.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty-nine.

If he dies when he's twenty-nine, and they never get a chance to marry—

She'll hate herself. She'll hate herself if that happens and no matter how he wishes it could be different, no matter how he wishes she could be here, he would never want her to hate herself, not if he dies, not ever. He loves her too much for that and she should only ever know love, the best of love, it's all he asks for her, all he wants, for her to be loved in his absence, if something were to happen to him, the way his mother has been loved by Bill in the absence of his father.

He doesn't want her to have to be loved by anyone else.

He doesn't want to die when he's twenty-nine.

He's got to live dammit.

He's got to live.

If he had a passport he would fly to Lisbon right now, fly to Lisbon and go to Coimbra and tell her he's going to live. Tell her he loves her and he'll love her forever and he's going to live, going to live until he's seventy-eight and die in his sleep and she won't have to worry about anything ever because he'll take care of it all, he won't leave her with a four year old little boy asking for his daddy, he won't leave her with two tiny little girls, he won't leave her, ever, not until he's an old man and there's nothing else for it and he can't help it.

He might text her the message instead, a matter of great urgency, but if he did she would think him demented and ring Nadir to see is he alright, ring John Henry to fly back from Sussex and take him back to Cloughmore in Baile na hAbhann and John Henry would because that's just the kind of thing he would do, and he laughs, laughs there on the side of the street, tears in his eyes and running down his cheeks, mingling with the rain. She would think him demented and he would not blame her. He has not been himself at all.

He feels more human already.

Grinning to himself, faintly unbalanced, his heart oddly light, he turns and walks for home. He will text her he loves her instead, text her and record himself playing the piece from the graveyard in Connemara that's hers and his as much as anyone else's, and send it to her as an email attachment, and she will open it and know he will love her beyond death, and that he is thinking of her, always.

Always.

And then he will lie down, and listen to 'Dancing in the Moonlight', and light a candle, and have a drink.

Or two drinks, maybe.

One for her, and one for him.

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**A/N: If you enjoyed, please do review.**


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